Training of a Seeker
by Kitt SummerIsle
Summary: At the beginning of the war Decepticons realized the usefulness of the Seekers as flying warriors. But instead of recruiting they decide to capture and tame them. But some of the Seekers are more than meets the optics... tie-in fic for Fly High


**Title: **Training of a Seeker

**Author:** Kit SummerIsle

**Verse**: Falcon!Seeker G1 AU: The falcon!Seeker idea is not mine, but razordragonfly's ( razordragonfly . livejournal tag / fear % 20 of % 20 falling , take out the spaces or search for it on Lj). My AU is based on this, but more or less G1, only the Seekers are not like what they usually are; here, they are classified as non-, or semi-sentient flying animals (aka falcons), while all the Decepticons and Autobots are grounders.

**Character(s): **Starscream, Shockwave, Skyfire

**Rating**: T

**Warnings**: some torture, violence, slavery and/or abuse of animals, depending on how you read it

**Summary**: Just at the beginning of the war Decepticons start to realize the usefulness of the Seekers as flying warriors. But instead of recruiting they decide to capture and tame them. But some of the Seekers are more than meets the optics...

**Disclaimer: **the usual. not owning it, just fooling around with TF

**Note**: This is a tie-in fic between Taming of a Seeker and Fly high, telling more of Starscream's story.

* * *

**Training of a Seeker**

**Grunts**

It's been a while since the tricoloured flier last saw the light blue mech, whose designation was Override and whom all Seekers seemed to take a liking. He was a little more forgiving towards them, let them sing a bit more and out for a little play more often. It was rare amongst the guards who usually enjoyed taunting and punishing them – but Override, when he saw it, sent them away for other duties. They worked better when he was around, thankful for the little leeway he gave and less afraid of him too. But sometimes he went away for awhile and their conditions became a bit worse all these occasions, so they awaited him back eagerly, even though he was always a bit sadder and more guarded after these times.

He was back, but there was no play and no singing still; he told them that they will soon go into a battle. His first, the tricoloured Seeker thought, the others sang about battles but so far he only killed a few of the red face marked mechs that were called 'Autobots' and those were in training. It was like hunting and easy to do, but the others' songs told him that battles were worse, because the mechs had weapons that could hurt from afar and if they got hit, they could be damaged or even crash. So he was warned to look out for these metal rods that the mechs held and used for such purpose. One of the Seekers, an old, experienced one showed him that he too got weapons like them; they were fastened to his arms but didn't do anything until they got into battle.

It interested him greatly and he made sure to follow the older one as they were herded out. It was strange to fly in such an enormous flock, as he has never seen anything even close to the group that he couldn't count but there were several trines and pairs in it, along with the singles, like himself still. He followed the commands that the controller on his collar gave, noting that they followed the grounders beneath them and ordered to circle back if they got ahead. There was no structure among the flock, which he didn't like; every Seeker flew wherever he wanted to and sometimes they hardly avoided a collision. Smaller flocks that he was familiar with always had a strict rank order that defined how they flew – but the grounders never trained them in aerial formations and so they were a disorganized group only.

Then he noticed that half of the flock got different orders than his group and they were directed to the sides of the grounder army; and finally the controller alerted him to the enemy that was straight ahead. Straight after they were ordered to attack and he, along with the others dived towards the Autobot mechs. He glanced at the old Seeker who was directing the metal rods towards the mechs on the ground and they had some kind of a light beam coming out, like a ray of sunshine coming from a hole in the cave. But these seemed to be more dangerous than light, as he saw; when one of them touched a mech on the ground he screamed and were damaged somehow.

But he had no more time for observation as the Autobots too lifted the metal rods that he was warned about – and they caused similar light rays coming towards them. He rolled and looped while diving to avoid the dangerous rays, but many of the Seekers were not fortunate – or agile enough to do so. The screams were horrible, reminding him of pain and fire, causing him to almost stall and fall with them… but somehow he shut out of the death cries, the agonized screeches to stick to his maneuvers and stay alive. He dived under the barrage and saw his fellow Seekers fall uncontrollably, crashing and dying in the deadly fire while the grounders underneath attacked the Autobots uncontested.

He shrieked in rage when he landed on his target, the first of these Autobots, a big, red and grey one, strong legs kicking the mech on the ground, his servos tearing his arm with the weapon off his frame and pulling the wires and cables off his throat. The flowing energon coated his claws, slicked them as they scraped across the red face on his chest plate, hooking into the seams and tearing away the armour. He crushed the spark chamber with a final screech and lifting his dark helm looked for another one to revenge his fallen kin.

Another of the grounders were nearby, looking at him in fear, lifting the weapon – but he was faster and the metallic rod was thrown aside and its wielder torn apart in short order. He felt something hitting his left wing and turned to seek the attacker – but just then pain exploded in the wing and jerking sideways, he knew that one of the rays must have found him. Throwing himself up into the air, igniting the thrusters, he was relieved that the wing was still working, only felt like it was on fire; and from above he saw the mech with the weapon and pounced on him.

He was too far and coming at him straight he wouldn't miss him again, the Seeker thought, getting desperate. Battle was so much more chaotic than he thought and the songs told; if he survived he would have to learn to watch everywhere, know everything… but first he would have to stay alive for that. The mech was lifting the weapon towards him and he was to far to reach him, but too close to maneuver – and he saw another Seeker, a huge, white and red one land behind him and claw his way under the mech's plating. When he too landed, between them the Autobot quickly became scrap and he smiled at the much bigger flier, hoping that they would both survive and meet again. Something that he never felt before called him to the big one.

He took off again to find other targets and found that not all of them had weapons that hurt from a distance; but these were usually bigger and harder to kill with thicker armour and better reflexes. It was hard work this battle, noisy, chaotic and disturbing; the Seeker, who never before had to fight for more than a few kliks started to tire, loosing concentration and his reflexes started to slow as well. But when he tried to fly farther away from the main melee, to have a little rest on one of the quieter spots nearby – then he heard the command to return and fight; and to make sure he did the clamps have him a jolt in the wingtips too.

With all the pain from the injuries and the disciplinary jolts, along with the tiredness he could hardly fly any more. Landing on the edge of the fighting he killed a few more mechs but mainly to avoid being punished again, not because he wanted to do it, not even for revenge for the fallen ones. There were few Autobots around by this time and even those seemed to be trying to run away or hide; and the controller gave him the order to take off again and find the remaining Seekers.

Less than half of the flock made it to the meeting and he was missing several of those whom he got to know lately. He wanted to land, to find them and see if they could be made to heal, but he wasn't allowed. He saw some of the winged shapes move on the ground still, he saw the big flier who helped him there too, but the order was to go back to the hangars and he couldn't disobey. Not even the mechs brought them back later, when they arrived. Those, who couldn't fly were abandoned, left behind to go slowly offline from their injuries or heal on their own if they could.

-o-o-o-

It was the first major battle in which Decepticons employed more than an occasional Seeker or two. It was also a total defeat with huge casualties for the Autobot forces, mainly because of the aerial force that they could not calculate with beforehand. It caused the Autobot Command to look into the situation and try to equalize forces by employing Seekers as well as analyzing their effect in the battles. Only, by this time they found out that Megatron had already captured most of them; and so the Sonic Canyons soon hosted a battle that the Autobots and Decepticons fought for once not winning the war, only to claim the remaining free Seekers. After the battle the canyon floor was littered with the broken remains of mechs and Seekers, a slowly rusting memento for a once free race. The blackened nests and the broken crystals saw no more Seekers shadows passing over them and pouncing on small prey - the survivors were in various cages with both factions.

The disappearance of the free Seekers raised the value of the captured and trained ones, since no matter the experiments, the forced matings and bonds, Seekers never sparked winglets in captivity. After the first few battles it was deemed wasteful to throw Seekers onto the enemy to draw their fire and let them fall by the dozens. They were retrained to avoid enemy fire, to fly in formations, to have a better chance of survival while doing the maximum damage. From cannon fodder they became trump cards, all the while remaining in the category of tamed animals. The Autobots made do with the few Seekers that they managed to acquire from various locations, mainly already trained individuals, saved a few injured ones from the first battle but remained a mostly groundbound army.

* * *

**Survivors**

The Seekers who made it back to Darkmount were milling around nervously, excited and jittery after the battle that was the first for many of them. Many of them lost a friend or mate in the battle and pained screeches and sobs were mixed into the many-toned songs that told their experiences and adventures to each other. The guards left them to it for once; the nervous energy that Seeker had after a battle was deemed to be best let off by letting them make a racket for a while. But soon, after they started to tire and quieten, they were herded back to the cages, back to the usual routine of training, boredom and punishments.

Decepticons had no idea, nor did they care about the Seekers becoming restless and bored in the cages, forced to stop singing and punished if they cuddled too much or showed too much affection among the trines. They wanted obedient, effective and vicious troops not a bunch of singing sissies. The officers in charge of the fliers frequently had brilliant ideas as to how to train them to be so and those who could not follow those ideas were deemed useless. As long as they had thousands of Seekers it was considered acceptable, even beneficial to weed out the weakest ones, but after a while, when someone up high took stock of their numbers the various experiments ceased and a uniform training system was established.

There were only a few of the Seekers who were exceptional or had various abilities and those were set apart from the rest. The tricoloured Seeker was one of these, his obvious intelligence was discovered right at the beginning and noted in his file. Soon after the first few battles, he was ordered to be taken into another place with far fewer cages and Seekers, mostly those whom he noticed before as unusual. Their Handlers were different too, minding each Seeker individually, instead of being part of a group.

But extra attention has never been a good thing in the Decepticon army as the selected Seekers soon learned. Or at least Starscream did; if he could hide the speed with which he grasped new concepts he would have done now, because by this time many Decepticon soldiers heard about the freak Seeker and wanted to see it for themselves. In true Decepticon fashion it involved cruel and humiliating poking, prodding and any kinds of tests that the mainly former miner or gladiator mechs could think of. Consequently, being separated from the other Seekers was on one servo a bad thing because he lost company, but also a good one, at least at first, because in this new place no common soldiers were allowed to play with the fliers.

There were only a dozen cages here, each containing a single Seeker – and the only one of them who was separated from his mate was soon removed, they hoped that he was only put back to their former place. There was a flier, a dark blue and silver one who could move small objects without touching them, and hurl them across the hangar with an impressive speed and accuracy. Another one could change his colors at will and even his shape somewhat. The Handlers tried to force him to change fully, making the wings disappear, but even the tricoloured Seeker couldn't quite get what was the point of that. No Seeker would willingly give up his wings, no matter what… but of course their masters didn't understand them, didn't even want to.

He saw Sunstorm too again, but it was at that point way beyond him – and certainly beyond the golden Seeker – what his specialty was. He only knew that all the mechs were keeping their distance from the golden flier when he got too excited or panicky. His already pretty colour was radiant at those times and something, an instinct whispered to the lone Seeker that he too should keep his distance because it must have been more than just pretty light coming off him. It didn't help that he was still drawn to him and the urge to court him was strong all the time. But he was sure that making a bond would be a bad idea. These Decepticons would use it against them as he saw in many pairs and trine.

"You there, White!" – the Handlers called the Seekers mainly by their primary colours, with an occasional nickname thrown in. "Screamer! Time for your lessons!" – they were laughing cruelly, the ridicule of the name covering long and painful sessions in a brightly lit place, strapped onto the cold, metallic table with wires connecting to his bared head. He never before knew the condition 'headache' as the carefree and playful Seekers had absolutely nothing in their natural habitat that could have caused one to any of them. But after these sessions he always felt strange, purged the energon like it was contaminated or bad and his head felt like after a big injury, heavy, aching and throbbing painfully for orns.

The Seeker whimpered soundlessly as the Handlers prodded him with a shockstick and shouted at him again to move and slowly, with a growing inner dread he followed them into the bright place. The one-opticked mech was almost as big as he and his faceless mask betrayed nothing to the cowering flier. He was strapped onto the table again and his helm removed, baring his inner circuitry to the world, held firmly in the framework on the table. A screen flickered to life overhead, turned downwards so he could see it. The jet knew that he couldn't just close his optic covers, because he had to watch the flat screen while the purple mech - Shockwave, he remembered the designation - fiddled with the insides of his head.

It hurt. It always hurt sometimes to the point of agony, but his vocalizer was muted and he couldn't scream or utter a single note. He wasn't sure sometimes if he could still sing with his damaged, often staticky-screeching voice. He certainly didn't try it since he was first laid out in this place. The flier at first didn't realize how his inner vocabulary grew, as he only used it to describe his own situation, inside his own processor. The pictures on the screen started to make sense, not only those which depicted his kind but also the ones about the mechs, the grounders and their lives.

He understood now the gestures of Shockwave as he nodded to himself when the flier identified a picture correctly and the negation when he was wrong; the scientist didn't mean to give feedback to the Seeker, only reacted to himself as he watched his computers play with the fickle mind of the jet. Slowly, in time even the headaches started to become less painful as his processor was forced to adapt, to develop, to reach connections and form nodes that were not possible before the direct stimulus.

It was the cruelest way to force a mech's processor to grow but it was effective, even though Shockwave couldn't repeat the same process with other mechs before. After a time the test subjects all offlined from the pain or the effects of their processors forced to go overdrive and burn out their nodes. Many mechs ended up going mad, becoming mindless drones reprogrammed to do menial work; or the more fortunate ones offlined at some point of the process. The only one who survived and remained sane so far, after vorns of experimenting thus was the tricoloured flier, just as Shockwave was ready to give up this method. Albeit he had no way of measuring saneness in the Seekers whose language has never been deciphered and whose behaviour was totally controlled by their handlers.

But he didn't much care in any way and as the flier showed signs of understanding more of his surroundings and enough of the pictures he declared the experiment as a success. He didn't want the Seeker to be too intelligent, only enough so that he could be trained to be an aerial commander of sorts, able to discipline the other, often clashing and arguing fliers in the air. The Trine system and the fact that Seekers never had a single leader didn't interest him; they were to adapt or… else.

Starscream trilled a few staticky notes quietly when the purple mech left him alone in the laboratory, for once free of the invading, intruding wires, if not the straps that held him down, uncomfortably on his back, on the wings that silently protested all the time. He got used to the headache by this time, pushing it into the background as he used the rare opportunity to look around in the place. The flier was surprised how many of the strange tools and object conjured up a name in his mind, even as the definitions were sometimes hazy when he wasn't sure of what they meant. Still, it meant that he became familiar with the grounder mechs' world and started to understand it.

They had a structure, a very strict system of ranks, power and backstabbing, totally unlike the Seeker's own. The one-opticked mech was very high in this as he observed all the other mechs being smaller and bowing to him. Also they were afraid of the scientist and even of his lab, which the Seeker could understand all too well. But he wasn't the ultimate leader, that was a mech called Megatron who never came to Darkmount and no Seeker has seen him either. But he was feared none the less, by grounders and fliers alike.

* * *

**Chosen**

_Listen/important/Sun_ the almost soundless, whispered trills reached Sunstorm when no mech was around. It was Starscream again, his quiet warble calling his attention and the golden Seeker lifted his helm to listen to him. He would be beautiful too, if they could ever wash properly again, the thought crossed his meta as he answered _Star/query/caution_. _Starscream/move/cycle/come_ he whispered on his scratchy voice, broken by the torture he was put through. _Where/move/query_ he asked, not knowing how he knew so much of their masters' plans, but accepting that he did. _Far/place/no/Seeker_ came the answer and he continued hurriedly _Star/stay/far/long_ and to Sunstorm's surprise with a _Sun/make/flock/leader_. He protested with a shrill _Sun/leader/negative_ that got a guard's attention at them and they had to cower quietly for a while to make him lose interest.

But Starscream insisted. _Seeker/flock/leader/must_. Sunstorm didn't think so. He only knew of trines and small flocks, never one that would include all Seekers. The mechs who kept them in cages instilled into them the fact that Megatron was the leader of the Decepticons – even though hardly any of the fliers understood such a complex concept – and that they too were Decepticons. _Megatron/flock/leader_, he insisted with a _other/punish/bad/negative_. But Starscream wouldn't have it. _Bad/leader/hurt_ he warbled in his broken voice that was a testament to his statement, _Seekers/good/leader/must_. They argued quietly for long about it, Sunstorm realizing that his former suitor grew far beyond the simple Seeker that he saw at first, way back in the canyons.

They still tried to flirt a bit, whenever they were let out of the cages and the handlers gave them a bit of a break. But they had to be careful about it, as the grounder mechs all frowned about attachments and bonds. _Mechs/love/negative_ he tried to explain and _hate/mechs/bond/weak_ although it was clear that he didn't quite understand that last bit either. But he taught Sunstorm to recognize a number of useful flat words that he could listen for from the Handlers and be warned about and these spread among the other Seekers too. The Decepticon handlers didn't know how or why the Seekers seemed to behave more lately but they accepted it without questions.

Before Starscream was removed for his training, he has managed to teach a lot to the other Seekers, especially to Sunstorm. The golden Seeker wasn't a rebellious type, certainly not a Wild One, but he liked to learn new things and Starscream had to be content with that. They had a substantial, if passive vocabulary and plenty of useful knowledge about the grounder mechs and the Decepticon army's inner workings. Their handling by the grounders, who didn't care about the trines started to bring the fliers more together, removing the formerly strict barriers that separated trines and flocks.

But the time came all too soon when he was moved to a new place, one that was far from Darkmount as he felt with his instinctive navigational sense. He was the only Seeker there, with plenty of grounder mechs around who never before saw a flier and didn't know how to handle him. It wasn't until Shockwave visited the training camp a few orns later that he was taken out of the closed box and into the usual cage; the mechs there simply didn't know that it was only for punishment and that he would go mad if kept there all the time.

Which almost happened and Starscream, after he was let out of the box, shivered and whimpered for orns and forgot most words that he knew in his terror. His voice box was finally broken for good then too; he screamed and screeched in the dark for so long that it was permanently damaged afterwards. But Shockwave didn't give him any time to recover; his training started straight away and if he didn't perform he was threatened to be put back to the box. No other incentive was needed to swallow his pain and fear and Starscream persevered.

The null-rays that he was fitted with came from a dead scientist's notes that Shockwave appropriated without any qualms. With these he could shoot mechs from afar, just like he saw some of the Seekers doing it in previous battles. It went against his instincts, but he understood the advantage of remaining far from one's enemy.

Starscream was trained and his skills honed until even his trainers couldn't find weaknesses in his perfection. He was fast, agile and deadly, and all the battles in which he was tried, he performed flawlessly – much to the Autobots' dismay who has just gained a strong adversary. Even when he was hurt, he managed to survive and always got back to Darkmount with numerous kills on his tab. In time even the Decepticons admitted that he was extremely useful and therefore not one to be played with or carelessly harmed.

The other Seekers too admired his perfection, both as a prospective mate and trine-member and as one that was deadlier than any of them. Their only problem was that he wasn't allowed to mingle with the other fliers much, instead kept and trained separate from them. The opportunity to learn words from the mechs didn't compensate for the much-missed company and the sounds of songs that he missed terribly. Since his vocalizer was damaged, his own voice was almost incapable of singing which also set him an outsider among the Seekers.

Vorns has gone and his life changed little. Finding no friends, trine and mates, outcast because of his damaged voice and extraordinary abilities, he grew sad and cynical. Fighting provided the only outlet for his frustration and he excelled in it, not knowing anything better. Even his dreams of the canyons and crystal forests faded and got lost in the sad and gone memories. The long gone red and white flier's vision flashed through his meta, to be replaced by sadness and loss. He existed only because he was too good to be deactivated – but no other goal or dream presented itself.

Until the order came from Earth that Megatron wanted to see the super-seeker.

* * *

**Note**: This fic comes after Taming of a Seeker and before Fly High


End file.
